Waterfalls and sunsets, the two things no one can resist taking pictures of, no matter how much you know in your heart that you can never capture the moment with anything remotely resembling justice. But here it is, my waterfall shot from some river somewhere in the Dominican Republic. I'm not even going to tell you where, because, honestly, this spot is so beautiful, and mostly undisturbed, so I selfishly want to keep it that way. It has been so hot and humid here,  and the water was so cool I had  to go for a swim, despite my lack of preparedness. I will  definitely come back here  again. I  should  add that I was in this spot for work reasons, scoping out a  potential  project site. The swimming was  more of  an  accident than  anything else.

I just want to address the question about the economic classification tool from a few days back (see Sept 9, 2011).

The short answer is `yes`, the voting can definitely be influenced. If that is a concern, there are a couple ways  to address  it  which I will try to  outline  here as briefly  as possible  (not all that brief):

1) Closed ranking:  as opposed  to open ranking which is what you  see   in the photo.  In  closed ranking you would pass out pieces  of paper for example,  and each person would write down  the proportions they think  apply  to each economic  class by themselves,  the submit the results,  which the facilitator would then  tally. This approach requires the majority of  the group to be  literate.
2) A comprehensive list of every family in   the community  is tabulated,  and each family  name written on a  separate  index card.  A small  group  of trusted community  members--selected by the larger group,  are  then given  the responsibility  to go  through   the entire  `deck`of cards and distribute each family according to the  appropriate  class. I have never done  this, and while  it  would  give a definitive result, it seems like a  lot of work as well as being somewhat intrusive  of people`s privacy. Maybe if someone reading this has had experience with this variation, they could comment.


The other aspect to consider is that  extraction of information  is not the primary  purpose these types  of  participatory  exercises. The ultimate goal is to get the community themselves thinking about their own situation, and to start to help them look at ways to address their own needs and goals, rather than having outsiders doing all the research, analysis, project design etc, etc. Nevertheless, if you look closely at the photo, you will see that the seed distribution shows that the `rich` class is smallest in proportion, and the mid and `poor`class are approximately equal, with a slight edge perhaps for the mid class. This I  think is a reasonable, although  not a perfectly precise reflection of reality, especially when one considers that in  this  particular exercise,  the mid-class  usually approximates the majority of those attending the meeting--the exercise is a reflection of self,  so to speak.

I hope that answers the question. But let me know if it doesn`t.

Here's the final result,  although a) I'm not  sure there were 400 people.  My guess would be 200 to  250 and  b) as  is often the case, the people that ate, I  don't think really realized  how much work went into the preparation--I  wouldn't have either if I didn't see it myself. The day started with Catholic mass and I would say  maybe 50 people took part in communion. Then their  were plaques handed out to some of the elders in the  family ('the oaks'), then the meal,  then merengue and swimming. Although  with the heat, more people seemed interested in swimming.  I  did neither.

This morning my landlady, and the organizer of this family event started her  day  at 6 am  and  has  been running around ever  since  like a benevolent dictator of a tiny country, commanding her army of 4, "Get another pot!", "Don't put so much salt in!", "Go fetch me more onions!", "Make Bob some breakfast!", and so on. I've slipped away for a  couple of hours to try and get some more  data entry  done. Just a little bit everyday.

Yet another pile of surveys to plough through. The stack in the back I entered this  afternoon (about 1/6th of the total) and the stack in the front is unentered (and  about 1/3rd of the total). This survey looks much more intimidating because it is 7 pages, versus the Haiti survey which is printed on 2 pages but both surveys have approximately the same amount of questions and therefore represent the same amount of work more or  less. I've got a week and with the help of the head agronomist here, I think we can get it done. (I'm in the Dominican Republic now, by the way)

On a completely different note, the family where I rent a room when I am here is having some  kind of big family gathering tomorrow for a mere 400 people. The woman in  the middle, with the black hat on has taken on  the responsibility for preparing food for everyone. Crazy. But she owned a restaurant for many years. In the photo is one of 2 pigs they are  cooking, and I don't know probably what seems like about 50 chickens. I'm invited, and actually it seems like I'm almost obliged  to go. I'll let you know  how it goes.

Somehow in the process of answering the question in the comment to  this blog, I managed to delete the entire Sept 9 entry. So here I am reconstructing it from memory (unfortunately I also deleted the comments):

I`ve probably talked before about participatory methods. Pictured below is an exercised called a  wealth ranking (aka poverty ranking). The idea is that community members with the help of a facilitator identify the different economic classes  in their own community  and the associated characteristics that distinguish each class.  For example one of the criteria  this group  used was number of animals owned,  with the `rich`class being seen as owning 15-20 animals,  the `middle`class 2-4 animals, and the `poor` class 0-2 animals.  A number  of other criteria are identified and outlined by the group until they are satisfied with their definitions, and then  a ranking takes place. Each group member is given seeds as counters--in this case 10 seeds per person-- and the everyone  places the sees in  the three classes according to how they think those three groups are distributed in  the community. In  the end you  get a pretty revealing picture  of the economic structure of the community.

A small victory. The survey  data for Haiti is completely  entered and  now  exists in  digital  form. This  meant pretty much a solid week of sitting at my  laptop as  surveyors  brought in  the forms from the field,  typing in  the  information and then double checking  every single data point before finally sending to  the  online data base we  set up for  this purpose.  I  recently read  a  stats  analysis  book where the author claimed that he  spends  about 80% of his time getting data ready  for  analysis,  and about 20% of his time  actually  doing the analysis. I was comforted  to know  that, because  I thought  maybe it was only my problem.

Today was a rather uneventful day of meetings and data entry. Meetings to talk about research, meetings to talk about watershed management. Pouring through stacks of household surveys and typing numbers into boxes on my computer. Sorry I've got nothing more than that.

Here's a Google Earth 3D view of one of the watersheds where our work is situated. I spent the better part of this afternoon working on this and related maps. Kind of pretty, huh?

Sunrise in Haiti

More pictures of little trees struggling for survival.  One of my favourite things I guess.  

A farmer plot fenced off to protect seedlings. You can see trees growing in the fenceline and hopefully the little blobs of green inside the plot which are trees too.

Same plot up close. Not sure if you can see but there are dozens of trees here, about 1.5 to 2  metres tall. This plot is probably about 18 months old.

Another plot about 5 years old. For those who know this is the Pere Albert Memorial plot.  You can see outside the fence there is not many trees at all, and one of the culprits lurking for more food.

A tiny leucaena which has seeded naturally from the larger trees in the above picture. In a couple of years this little tree and a half a dozen others I saw scattered around will start to fill in the space in the bottom part of the plot in the picture above. Here's to you Pere Albert, where ever you are.

It was so hot in my room last night I decided to grab one of the earthquake tents  and sleep outside on the porch. This morning when I woke up, I got up and went to grab the stuff sack to start taking down the tent and this huge tarantula jumped out of the stuff sack and onto my hand. I jumped too and yelled. So lesson learned, keep the stuff sack inside the tent.

At 4:40 pm someone from the community told me with absolutely no trace of irony that there was a soccer match between two local teams starting at 4pm and if I was interested I could watch since it would be starting soon.

This just cracks me up since starting at 4 means anytime but 4.

Haiti earthquake consequences

Ever wondered what has happened in Haiti since the earthquake? Heard the news reports about how there's been no progress? Here's a couple of photos of a hillside where we did tree planting in the aftermath, between April and Oct 2010. In the first photo, you'll see there are a bunch of contour canals still in place, and the little green patches in the mid foreground are all trees. I skidded down the hill--about a 45 degree slope to give you a closer view of some of those green patches now 1 to 1.5 metres tall.

I'm not trying to say that Haiti is suddenly going to be reforested. Those little trees have a long way to go...

Made it. Even landed about 10 minutes early. So no ill consequences of Hurricane Irene here. Apparently there was some flooding damage in the north of the country, but for the most part Haiti was lucky this time around. I was worried because when we did our evaluations in 2008, Haiti had just been hit by 4 hurricanes in a row, over about a one month period. So I was afraid we might have the same thing happen again.

"On the road again, I just can't..."
Wait? I could wait really. However, duty calls or something. Flying just as hurricane Irene hits the east coast is probably not my greatest idea ever, but the airline seems to think it is ok, so here we go.

On a completely unrelated note, yesterday an important Canadian political figure, Jack Layton, leader of one of our parties here, the NDP was laid to rest and his life celebrated in a huge ceremony in Toronto. I learned that one of his favourite songs was "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, and it was performed at the funeral. It's a beautiful song, and one of my favourites too, but it got me thinking about what songs I might want performed when that inevitable day comes. Morbid maybe, but for the record here's a list of possibles:

When I survey the wondrous cross, Isaac Watts

There is a redeemer, Keith Green

Be still my soul, Jean Sibelius

Redemption songs, Bob Marley

We shall be free, Garth Brooks

Not to put too fine a point on it, but here are the ticket stubs from my recent trip, plus one receipt for a shower in the Narita airport!

Home at last, thank God I'm home at last. So the journey home began in Tanzania 2 days ago and ended in Canada this evening. I was figuring on the plane--lots of time to do so--that I spent about 55 hours travelling, either flying or in airports, and about 70 hours from the time I got up on the first travel day until my head hits the pillow after this blog post. This I believe is my personal record for longest single travel 'day'. Made longer of course by the fact that the return journey retraced steps back through Thailand instead of going through Europe--which would be shorter, but ironically not cheaper (I do not understand airfares).

There's things about Japanese culture that fascinate me. Like the ultra-politness: bowing, handing things to people with two hands. I feel like one of the only things that remains with me after three generations is the not wearing shoes indoors. I don't like that at all, even in someone's house where they do wear their shoes.

The sad thing is I know so little really about the countries of my ancestral origin. And speak more of other languages and no Japanese, German or Gaelic. So I'm thinking maybe I might plan my next vacation trip with the ancestral origin theme. Start in Scotland, go to Germany, then Japan. I guess that would be 3 week trip at least.

The final airport of the journey. Had a 14 dollar shower. Here's a photo which should be more than obvious as to where I am.